upgrading the battery in my laptop

[pilot_nate]

Hey all, I have been upgrading the components in my laptop (cheaper than buying a new one), and my last thing ot upgrade is the battary. I have a 3 year old Acer Aspire, and I'm lucky to get 2 hours out of it with minimal use (no videos). I know I can get new batteries (via microcenter, etc), but will the new ones be that much of a performance booster? Thanks!

 

[mbreslin1954]

A new battery will not boost your performance, but they WILL hold a charge longer than two hours. Exactly how long with your model I cannot say (depends of course on usage), but I would be very surprised if a new battery did not last at least 4.5 hours long.

 

[pilot_nate]

Yea i know it wont boost performance, but a longer battery life would be fantastic! Thx!!

 

[computernewb]

Depends on what battery you buy. Did your current battery hold the charge for much longer before? If you buy the exact same one, then it will have the same charge as before. If you buy a cheaper one with lower mWh, then you wont see any increase in battery life. You can use a battery monitoring program such as batteryinfoview to see how much wear there has been to your current battery.

Also, dont buy a cheap battery from ebay claiming its 100% genuine replacement but its like $30-40 . you will regret it. One time i bought a cheap battery and it has 10% wear level after 3 charges! Another 2 times the battery couldnt keep my laptop powered on and it would randomly shut down during usage. Sometimes it would shutdown when booting up! You really get what you pay for in a laptop battery.

 

[pilot_nate]

A new battery will not boost your performance, but they WILL hold a charge longer than two hours. Exactly how long with your model I cannot say (depends of course on usage), but I would be very surprised if a new battery did not last at least 4.5 hours long.

So my battery is 4400mAh, and the replacement batteries at microcenter are also 4400mAh, would I still get the energy improvement you stated?

 

[mbreslin1954]

His original battery is three years old. I've never heard of one of the major PC manufacturers selling a laptop with a new battery lasted only two hours (aside from some gaming laptops). No battery holds its original charge after three years, you're lucky if it holds more than an hour charge after three years.

Almost all normal laptop reviews I've seen, and plenty of them have been Acers, the laptops come with a battery that provides anywhere from four to six hours of charge when new. If you buy a new battery from Acer I'm sure it will get you back up to the four hour level, or whatever it was when your laptop was new.

I would echo computernewb's advice to stay away from cheap batteries. Buy an Acer replacement, either from Acer or a reputable store selling Acer brand batteries, like Amazon.